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No Change at the Home Office

So Gordon's new Home Secretary is Jacqui Smith, taking over from tough man John Reid. According to TheyWorkForYou she is:

• 'Moderately against' a transparent Parliament
• 'Very strongly for' introducing ID cards

Oh dear.

No Brown ID?

Jack Straw, 'campaign' manager for the man who would be king, is apparently in line to be Home Secretary (again) when Reid steps down as Blair's NuLab project finally collapses on 27 June. According to the Guardian, Jack has hinted that the ID card fiasco might be reviewed under a Brown premiership.

While the former home secretary has been supportive in public, leaked papers have made clear that he repeatedly opposed the idea in cabinet... "I will continue to urge strongly that this issue be shelved," he told his cabinet colleagues on September 24 that year [2003].

The estimated cost of the scheme is now around £6 billion, although the £510m cost of registering Britons living abroad has been offloaded to the Foreign Office budget to keep the official estimate looking better. But Gordon's eye for numbers would surely be attracted by "six billions", as he likes to say it, if he could say he was moving some of it to the NHS.

Wot Bad News?

Today is a good day for burying things. No, not careers and reputations, but Bad News (© Jo Moore).

First, interest rates continue their upward spiral as the Bank raises the base rate to 5.5%, its highest level since 2001. [OK, it wasn't the MPC's decision that Blair should do his nauseating "what a great 10 years it's been" thing today]. But the pundits seem to be saying: "Don't worry, energy prices are falling [but not at the petrol pumps, in my experience], so the rates will soon come down again". The pundits I listened to 8-10 years ago used to say that a rate change takes 18 months to filter through to the inflation figures. Go figure.

Then, the Home Office has announced that the official cost of the disastrous ID card scheme has risen £400 million to £5.31bn since the last estimate. The Tories and Lib Dems claimed that the Home Office broke the law by releasing the updated figures a month later than they should... Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Nick Clegg said: "It is bad enough that the government seeks to bury bad news behind the camouflage of Tony Blair's announcement. Breaking the law to do so breaks new ground even for Tony Blair's Labour Party."

The good news is that the removal vans have been booked for 27 June. The day before my Dad's birthday. If only he was still around to enjoy the moment...

Today's the Day!

Today's the day we've all been waiting for. Two weeks ago, the Telegraph predicted that Blair would announce his resignation on 1 May, the tenth anniversary of his election as PM, and – crucially – the eve of the local elections. An attempt, typically, to limit Labour's expected electoral damage. "Even Mr Blair's most loyal supporters concede his unpopularity is so deep that his resignation could actually improve the party's showing".

He didn't. But the Telegraph's source was half right, because on 1 May the man announced his intention to announce the 'timetable for his departure'. On the GMTV sofa – where else? – he said: "I'll make my position clear next week, I'll say something definitive then."

As Nick Robinson says today, "It is now a staggering 952 days since a weakened Tony Blair first declared that he would not seek to go 'on and on and on'."

Now, at last, he has told the Cabinet when he will go. He stays, allegedly, for seven weeks until a new Labour leader is chosen. Brown praised Mr Blair's "unique achievement over 10 years and the unique leadership he had given to the party, Britain and the world"... His comments were greeted by "much thumping of tables" by Mr Blair's colleagues. Whether in agreement or anger we are not told.

The public announcement will be in Sedgefield at midday.

UPDATE: Over at Blairwatch, ringverse points out that 27 June is exactly 1000 days from the moment – on 30 September 2004 – that Blair announced his intention to step down.

9 Jobs in 10 Years Too Many for Reid

In most CVs, nine jobs in ten years would have alarm bells ringing. Incompetent, can't handle the pressure, upsets the team, too interested in his own career to stay the course? Whatever the reason, John Reid has now announced he will resign as Home Secretary "when Tony goes". This just weeks after deciding that the department he called "not fit for purpose" should be split in two.

Ian Dale writes about rats and sinking ships. And a commenter mentions a report that a group resignation of Blairites should be expected, timed to coincide with Blair's departure. Perhaps he just jumped before he was pushed. Whatever, it means one less Scot in Brown's (one assumes it will be him) cabinet pool – I for one can never decode Reid's heavy Glasgow accent.

If You're Nasty, I'll Cross You Off My Christmas Card List

Someone once told me that the most important function of a contact database in a professional environment – such as an architect's practice – is to maintain the Christmas card list. Forget to send one to all the right people at an important client, and their business might be lost.

So it's interesting to note the importance that T Blair assigns to his list. Very very important, apparently. Martin Rosenbaum reports on his Open Secrets blog that the Information Commissioner has ruled that number 10 must reveal which international leaders have been receiving the PM's cards. No. 10 have been fighting the FOI request: [Downing Street's] arguments for keeping the list secret refer to 'private disagreements or tensions with a particular country which meant that a Christmas card was not sent from the Prime Minister'.

We wait for the list with bated breath.

Turn Off Your Lights So I Can Fly

Interesting discussion on Newsnight last night, as 'Ethical Man' Justin Rowlatt came to the end of his year-long experiment to lead a better life. Gavin Esler was joined by Environment Secretary David Milibland, Peter Ainsworth (Con), Chris Huhne (Lib Dem) and Siân Berry (Green). Also from Denmark by 'sceptical environmentalist' Bjorn Londberg.

Amid the discussion of air travel – the Tories' proposal to curtail domestic flights, general agreement from the Lib Dems that air travel should be as high or higher priority as changing the lightbulbs, criticism of the Government policy of building more runways and terminals while berating us all for leaving our VCRs on standby, and so on – two things struck me.

First, Milli said in effect that air travel had been fixed because Gordon had increased Air Passenger Duty. Now a £5 or £10 take-off tax is not going to discourage anyone from flying (unless they're poor). But it is going to contribute significantly to Gordon's bucket of money. Will he use it to provide better public transport (any public transport) where I live? Will he 'eck as like. It's just another tax on 'hard working families' which has nothing to do with the environment.

And second, Milli defended Labour's reluctance to limit air travel by saying that we have to look at the total carbon footprint (and more about that when I can get my words together) so flying is OK provided we don't use our cars and replace our lightbulbs with low energy ones. Justin Rowlatt had already been roundly told off on the programme because after making some quite significant energy savings in his house and lifestyle, he'd pretty much blown the lot on a flight to Jamaica.

But at least Milli seems to be singing from the same hymn sheet as his boss, even if it's the wrong hymn sheet. Blair was widely condemned for flying to Barbados with his substantial family and army of minders and lackies for his hols. But he said: "I'm not going to be in the position of saying I'm not going to take holidays abroad or use air travel, it's just not practical."

The Independent on Sunday has since reported that Tony Blair personally emits more than 700 times as much of the pollution that causes global warming [sic] as the average Briton... Chris Huhne, for the Liberal Democrats said: "Tony Blair can't be taken seriously. He lectures the world on cutting carbon emissions but is profligate in his personal behaviour."

Justin Rowlatt's report, and the debate, currently on the Newsnight website here.

Johnny Foreigner to Blame for Small Companies' Tax Hike

Gordon Brown has blamed immigrants from Eastern Europe for his "need" to increase corporation tax for small companies from 19% to 22% by 2009. In evidence to the Treasury Select Committee... Mr Brown said East European workers were being encouraged to register themselves as companies to avoid paying income tax when they arrived in the UK.

"One of the problems that we have faced – and had to act upon – is that people who are coming to work in this country are being encouraged to form and work through managed services companies even before they come into this country."

He said it was a "problem that every country faces – but it is a problem that we are going to deal with and we are going to deal with in a way that does not penalise the good company that is investing in the future". [BBC]

Gordon's idea of 'not penalising the good company' is to give some improved tax allowances for companies that invest fairly substantial sums in plant and machinery. It's the company equivalent of tax credits for low paid workers. But many companies don't need to make any significant investment in equipment. It sounds good in the budget speech, but it means little.

"I [do] need to act to deal with individuals artificially incorporating as small companies to avoid paying their due share of tax, a practise if left unaddressed would cost the rest of the taxpaying population billions of pounds. And I will take action in a way that will not raise the tax burden on the self employed and small businesses overall." [Budget Speech]

So thousands of small companies will have to pay more tax because of the alleged misdemeanours of a few East European workers. And remember these immigrants are the very people the Government is so keen to have here, "helping to fill gaps in the UK's labour market, especially in administration, business and management, hospitality and catering." [BBC].

It's worth checking back on Gordon's feelings about small companies five years ago, in the 2002 Budget speech:

"Small businesses account for nearly half the economy's output and 55% of all jobs in the private sector – over 10 million jobs in all. And the small firms of today are the big firms of the future.

"We want to see a more enterprising Britain where, in every region, more small businesses are starting up and where you can work your way up – a ladder of opportunity from employment to self-employment, from micro business to growing business – with government on businesses' side as firms hire for the first time, as they invest, as they seek equity, as they export and grow...

"And to send out the strongest signal about the importance we attach to small businesses and the creation of wealth I propose to reduce the starting rate of corporation tax - also with immediate effect - from 10p to zero. Small companies with taxable profits of less than £10,000 will pay no corporation tax.

"With the starting rate of tax cut from 10p to zero and the small companies rate down from 23p in 1997 to 19p this is now the most favourable corporation tax regime for small companies in any of the advanced industrial countries."

And I seem to remember (though I can't lay my hands on a reference) that one reason for introducing either the 10p or the zero rate was to encourage sole traders to form limited companies. When thousands had done so, Gordon later pulled the rug from under them by abolishing the rate. Talk about micro-managing!

Gordon's Pensioner Tax

In what is being billed as his last budget – unless, of course, he doesn't make it to the top – Grumpy went out with a tuppenny flourish, announcing in his final sentence a 2p cut in the basic rate of tax. Clearly he expected that the press and everyone else would have gone to sleep during the boring bit with all the statistics and pre-announcements of distant changes, and hoped that the papers will be proclaiming him tomorrow morning as a tax cutting Labour Chancellor. There was predictably plenty of whooping from the Labour benches.

Sadly for Gordon, though, everyone seems to have noticed that he has eliminated the 10p tax band, which he himself introduced to ease low earners more gently into the tax system. The effect appears to be that anyone now paying tax and earning less than £18,000 per year will be paying more tax. And anyone now paying only tax in the 10p band – which I think is up to about £7,500, or £9,000 for people over 65 (I stand to be corrected on the precise figures) –  will now pay twice as much tax. That includes many pensioners with modest private or company schemes.

How appropriate that the so-called champion of the poor should make his Pensioners' Tax his 100th increase. What better way to encourage people into work than to increase the tax on them doing so.  And who would have thought that a Labour Chancellor would be increasing the tax on the poor to give more to high earners. Perhaps he's Tony's friend after all, and wants him to be able to hang on to more of his book and speaking deals.

Angry Ming in IDS Déjà Vu

Sir Menzies Campbell has vowed to get angry on behalf of Britain's "frustrated majority" as he marks his first year as Liberal Democrat leader. BBC

He said he is ready to step up a gear and move the Lib Dems into a new phase. I'm reminded of the toe-curling Iain Duncan Smith conference speech which immediately preceded his demise as Conservative leader: "The quiet man is here to stay, and he's turning up the volume."

A pity it ended that way, because IDS is a good man. Sometimes – both in politics and in the real world – people are at their best when they're not playing in the first division.

I'm On The Phone

So, from today the penalty for using a mobile phone at the wheel is doubled to £60, with three bonus points. No doubt some drivers will be sufficiently apprehensive to resist the temptation, but I wonder if it will really have much effect. It relies on the driver being seen using the phone by a police officer, and then the officer bothering to stop the vehicle. But these days I almost never see a police patrol car. I do see plenty of drivers on the phone; it's not just the white van driver, but everyone from the artic driver negotiating a mini roundabout to the bimbette in the beat-up Peugeot 306 discussing last night's entertainment.

There's an interesting piece by Tom Clarke on the Channel 4 News blog, on the level of distraction caused by a phone call, measured in Tom's test on a simulator at the Transport Research Laboratory.

Some time ago I found myself being followed in the outside lane of the M25 by a well-heeled middle-aged lady in a Mercedes, who was on the phone for 10 or more minutes. She'd come to my attention as she was driving rather too close to my back bumper for comfort, and I spent a fair portion of my time looking in the rear view mirror. After a while I realized that she'd also lit a cigarette, which she was manipulating between mouth, window and steering wheel with her right hand while keeping the phone to her ear with the left. All the time she talked, laughed and bobbed her well-coiffured hair, and I was glad when I had the chance to pull in and let her pass.